BAKED GRANNY SMITH WITH MINCEMEAT AND VANILLA CUSTARD -

Ingredients

4 Granny Smith apples
50g mincemeat
20g sunflower seeds
20g walnuts
20g pumpkin seed
20g caster sugar
20g plain flour
20g cold butter

80g marzipan
VANILLA CUSTARD
300ml whole milk
300ml double cream
100g caster sugar
8 egg yolks
1 vanilla pod

Granny Smith apples are perfect for baking and this recipe is easy to make a favourite with all the family.

BAKED GRANNY SMITH WITH MINCEMEAT

Method

Pre heat the oven to 180 degrees.
Wash the apple and trim the top and bottom, then lightly score the skin of the apple going round horizontally with a small knife.
In a food processor put the flour, butter, caster sugar, walnuts and seeds. Then gently pulse to make a crumble looking mix, leave to one side.
Remove the core of the apple with an apple corer.
Take your mincemeat and push it into the space left by the core of the apple being removed.
Place into baking dish and scatter the crumble mix on top of all the apples, so it’s even.
Place the dish into the oven and bake for 14 minutes until the apples are soft to touch.
Whilst the apples are cooking roll out the marzipan until it is thin and place in the fridge on grease proof paper until chilled. Once cold get a round disk with a cutter, the same size as the apple.
Once the apples are cooked, remove them from the oven and place a disk of marzipan on to each apple, now either blow torch until golden, or if you don’t have a blow torch, place the dish under to hot grill which will give you the same effect.
Place on to a plate and drizzle with custard, ice cream or both.

VANILLA CUSTARD

Method

Pour the cream and milk in a thick bottomed saucepan. Scrap the vanilla seeds from the pod and place into the pan and warm gently.
Whisk the egg yolks and sugar together in a bowl.
Once the eggs and sugar are mixed slowly pour the milk mix over the egg mix, whisking all the time (make sure the cream mix isn’t too hot or the egg will scramble and you will have to start again!)
Once it’s incorporated, place back in the pan and gently cook out the eggs so the mix coats the back of a spoon and serve straight away or pour into a bowl and leave to cool.

Phil Leicester Head of Culinary Sales and Retention

One of my earliest food memories is when my mum used to bake with me and my brother most weekends, we used to fight over who would scrape the bowl out with the leftovers, normally he won as he is older than me so he pulled rank.

I feel there are 2 food trends for me. The first one is pasta, I think there are some good pasta orientated restaurants opening up such as Bancone. The other trend at the moment is choux pastry along with bakeries bringing back classics such as, the Paris brest.

One of my favourite places to eat, at the moment, is local to where I live, which is a place called Garrards. It does fully loaded burgers, chips, streaks and ribs. It’s one my children love to go to, as it’s very relaxed and they do really cool ice cream soda floats, in my opinion the cocktails are better!

One of my most memorable meals is when I was on my honeymoon in Hong Kong and, as you do, when you go on holiday, we asked the concierge at the hotel where we can get an authentic dining experience one evening. He made the booking for us and gave us directions to the restaurant which was situated in a shopping complex, which was getting refurbished, so once we navigated the bamboo scaffolding and the rest of the building site. We got to the restaurant and our dining experience, of a 9-course tasting menu, started with the first course being a pig’s head soup, I will let you imagine the other 8 courses, but put it this way, it wasn’t our conventional Cantonese cuisine, not a chicken ball in sight!

My ideal dinner guests would be David Jason, as he is a comic genius, Vinnie Jones, just to hear about his life experiences about his football career and his now movie career, and finally my wife as I would need someone to tidy up at the end of the meal for me…

My cookbook inspiration at the moment is the DJ BBQ Fire food written by Christian Stevenson. This is at the moment my go to book, as it’s BBQ season. I also like The Pie Room by Callum Franklin because, lets face it, who doesn’t like any form of pastry! If I have friends coming over I have a flick through a series of books by Thug Kitchen in LA. I like this book as, coming from a working kitchen, the recipes are written how we talk in the kitchen, with the expletives included.

The main three items I have in the fridge are: mature cheddar cheese, charcuterie and Branston Pickle.